some disks we hold dear...
(in random order, with random comments
- (a)=adrian, (d)=david, (m)=marcella)
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the bees / sunshine hit me
howie b / music for babies (1996)
fsol / isdn (1995)
RADIOHEAD
/ amnesiac (2000)/ ok computer (1997)
brian eno / music for airports
beastie boys / check ya head (1992)
portishead / dummy –
billy bragg and wilco / mermaid avenue (1998)
beck / odelay (1996)
blur / blur (1996) / 13(1999)
massive attack / blue lines
tricky / maxinequaye (1995)/ nearly god (1996)
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big audio dynamite ii / the globe (1991)
wilco / yankee hotel foxtrot (2002)
itch-e + scratch-e / itch-e kitch-e koo (1993)
the beatles /the beatles (1968)
'the white album'. this album really
should be the blueprint for every album made. producer george
martin said it would've been a great single album - i think it is the
greatest double album ever. so many styles are covered, yet they
all hang together somehow. helter skelter to mother nature's sun
to rocky raccoon to why don't we do it in the road to while my guitar
gently weeps. if every band could be this wildly creative,
especially in these days of 74+ minutes of cd space, there wouldn't be
so much genre-ghettoised generica floating around. all the
beatles albums are classics, this is the best.(a)
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john lennon / plasic ono band.(1970)
bjork -
vespertine
(2001)
with every release, bjork's music tends to slip further and further
away from the mainstream, and further into uncharted brilliance.
her 2005 album, 'medulla', created entirely with human voices, is
astounding. but that is a sort of dead end, in that any artist
that follows her there can only be compared as an inferior bjork.
'vespertine', from 2001, leaves open the chances for other
artists (such as ourselves) to take inspiration and do something with
it. custom-made music boxes dance with bjork's own incredible
electronic and acoustic production. melodies tumble over each
other in (dis)harmonic waves. and the swan dress is awesome, no
matter what women's glossy gossip magazines had to say about it.(a)
midnight oil /10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 (1982)
Pink Floyd / meddle (1971)
primal scream /screamadelica (1991)
this album is one of the pillars of modern music, well, for me
anyway. beats, melodies, psychedaelia for the post-baby
boomer. from the sublime cover of the 13th floor elevators' 'slip
inside this house' to jah wobble's exquisite dub bass in the 'higher
than the sun' symphony, it's eclectic and never faulters. an
album that demonstrates how to honour your influences yet still
transcend them.(a)
the clash / london calling(1980)
the early 80s were a good period for the clash. this was a double album from 1980. a year later came the triple album set of 'sandinista' which is almost as good as this. i discovered the clash as a 16 year old well after they'd broken up, but even then they sounded fresher than most of what was played on the radio at the time. their punk origins had flowered into a technicolour of dub, caustic pop, rockabilly and, well, punk. the production is what most blew me away - there's minute sounds everywhere making every listen a game, the drums are never content to just hold a beat - they are as melodic as any instrument on the album, and there is space in every arrangement for some oddball instrument or other sound to breathe.
cornershop / when i was born for the 17th time (1997)
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ride / nowhere (1990)
de la soul / 3 feet high and rising (1989)
whenever i start to worry about the limitations of my music making
machines, i always think of this album. recorded with only an
early akai (mono) sampler, a turntable, drum machine and a whole lot of
creativity. would the album have been any better with more
sophisticated equipment? the day i bought this, i had a gift
voucher and i wandered around trying to decide between this (my first
ever hip-hop/non rock album) and sonic youth's 'goo'. while i do
like that album too, it's interesting to ponder where my musical
tangents may have gone had i bought that instead of this. as it
is, this album ushered in a huge shift (or perhaps broadening is a
better term) in my musical tastes and future pursuits.(a)
sidewinder / tangerine (1997)
in my opinion, this is the last great rock album ever made.
there's been other good rock things released since, but these are
generally pastiches of historical rock moments. this album
actually took rock to new places sonically and never rested on its
influences. like goldie producing the jefferson airplane playing
lost kinks demos. they disbanded a little while after this album
without ever really breaking out of the australian underground, but i
think they should have been one of the bands that mattered. (a)
deep child / hymns from babylon (2000)
i first heard deepchild's music live in around 1996/97 and waited
eagerly for years for his debut album. bouncing glitches and
truly broken breakbeats underpinned by the highest of dub
production aesthetics made this quite mesmerising. my eldest
daughter was born about 9 months after the release of this album.
as a baby, whenever she couldn't get to sleep, i played this album
loudly and she would be invariably soothed.(a)
the stone roses / the stone roses (1989)
possibly the single most important album in my musical
upbringing. at a time when i loved 60s pop, but couldn't find a
contemporary equivalent to call my own, i heard fool's gold on the
radio. was that wah wah guitar, and an actual song, with a dance
beat!!?? my harsh and deeply held prejudice against dance music
disappeared almost instantly. when i found the album, it had the
songs, the fashion, the guitar, the harmonies, the cool - everything i
loved but all brand new. 5 years later, seeing them on their only
visit to australia, the highlight was undoubtedly 'made of stone',
possibly the most perfect live pop moment i have ever experienced
live.(a)
bob dylan / oh mercy (1989)
yeah, bob dylan supposedly hit his peak in the 60s, and i love
all that, too, but this seems to do him so much more justice. the
lyrics actually make sense and daniel lanois' production is just spot
on. dylan's voice sounds like it is resonating with wisdom
from before the beginning of the universe, his harmonica, for possibly
the only time in his career, sounds warm and haunting, not piercing and
repellant. and it is one of the few 'christian' albums ever that
i can actually stand listening to.(a)
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whilst later work by the group is
very uptempo, this, their 2nd album, is a far different
proposition. this hangs together as a wonderful whole.
almost beatless, many sounds feel like they were recorded inside the
hull of a submerged ship somewhere in the ocean. it's a digital
album which sounds incredibly organic, the reverb consumes the ears,
the whole thing is ambient but never in danger of becoming
wallpaper. the 5000 fingers are inspirational in their diversity
and this album is truly wonderful. (a)
u2 / achtung baby (1991)
the flaming lips / the soft bulletin (1999) / yoshimi battles the pink
robots (2003)
underground lovers / leaves me blind (1992)
from impending doom of the opening chord of 'eastside stories' to
the closing calm of 'whisper me nothing' this album is all good.
the album veers through dub, shoegazer guitar maelstroms, low-fi
electronica and pure white noise. insistent grooves are never far
off either, and the highlight for me is where most of these attributes
blur together in the double play of 'your eyes' followed by 'ladies
choice'. the band also was the first to really open my eyes to
the possibilities of live visuals which (in the days before data
projectors as commonly owned objects) they created with immaculate
multiple projector slideshows. a truly great creative entity.(a)
gerling / children of telepathic experiences (1998)
not many groups make truly eclectic music. however, the jump from
'ghost patrol' and 'death to the apple gerls' to 'enter, space
capsule'(and they're just the 'marketable' singles) is nothing short of
remarkable. that every style they rip off (and they've done lots
more, too, since then) is pulled off with finesse, while still sounding
like gerling, is something i find very inspiring.(a)
underworld / 2nd toughest in the infants (1996)
probably the biggest specific influence in the formative stages of
telafonica, underworld haven't released a bad album since their mk ii
incarnation in the early 90s. always the complete package -
packaging design still often mimics the mid 90s tomato aesthetic 10
years later, and the music hasn't dated a second. underworld are
an album band, one of the first electronic acts to be successfully
so. this album ebbs and flows, tracks build and disintegrate
slowly and, if you bought the australian edition, you got a bonus disc
which had the full versions of born slippy.nuxx and rez. what
more could you want from any album?(a)
groovski / groovski (2002)
lipstick / little love (2004)
it's only an e.p., but lipstick haven't released an album yet, and
this has had a big influence on telafonica. the direct influence
on a number of the tracks on telafonica's 'morpheme' sounds reasonably
obvious. but the amount of contrast, momentum and variety created
with a minimal pallette in each track is astounding. krystal's
melodies float along and subliminally drill their way into your head
until you catch yourself humming them hours later. the clicks and
glitches make their own melodies, pushing the limits of house music to
deepest space.(a)
gusgus /polydistortion (1997)
if only for the presence of 'is jesus your pal?' this album would be
brilliant. one voice, one 808 and some haunting sound fx.
however, there's so much more. each track is generally based
around the simplest of loops which are then filtered and twisted
relentlessly, underpinning beautiful melodies from a whole host of
different voices. anything bu gusgus gets my recommendation, but
this is probably my favourite.(a)
aphex twin / selected ambient works
dj shadow / entroducing
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the chemical brothers /
... dig your own hole (1997)/ surrender (1999)
(surrender) is there much left to say about the chemical
brothers? they singlehandedly created a new genre (though, if
you replaced the acid squelches with chuck d's voice, their first 2
albums sound a lot like early 90s public enemy), took live electronica
to the masses and looked like complete dweebs at the same time.
they simply know how to do very obvious things with more finesse than
anyone else, meaning it all comes off sounding uncliched, even when it
is . surrender saves the big beats for just a few cuts and adds
great depth in the process. and the cover artwork is great.(a)
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